First Look: Kit Rocha’s Beyond Addiction (August 11, 2014)

Trix changed her name and her life when she got clean four years ago. Now, she has a new family and a job she loves—tending bar and dancing at the Broken Circle. As an O’Kane, she’s happy, untouchable. Until a nightmare from her old life tears her away from her home and drags her back to Hell—also known as Sector Five.

He’s still living—and dying—in it.

Losing Trix was the kick in the head Finn needed to get sober, but working as an enforcer for a man he hates is slowly crushing his soul. The only thing that keeps him going is his determination to destroy Sector Five from the inside. Then Trix comes back into his life—alive, in danger—and nothing else matters.

Getting her home could be a suicide mission. The only thing deadlier is the old spark that flares to life between them. Soon, Finn and Trix are battling the one addiction neither of them ever managed to kick—each other. And it could cost them everything.

War is coming to Sector Four. A sector leader is dead. Alliances are shifting, as tenuous as a secret deal or a knife in the back. And two people are caught in the crossfire. Kit Rocha's Beyond Addiction picks up with Finn and Trix right where book four's cliffhanger left off, and soon the two are on a good, old-fashioned road trip O'Kane style, running for their lives and trying to get home, wherever that is. For Trix, the O'Kanes are family, but Finn, a Sector Five renegade enforcer under corrupt leadership, isn't sure where he belongs now. He only knows that now that he has Trix back, he can't let go of her again.

It's Finn and Trix's powerful backstory as addicts with little to hope for, trapped in the hazy, drugged world of Sector Five, who clung together through the worst and eventually clawed their way out separately, even if years later memory is all they have, that is the driving force behind their romance. Their thankfully inevitable reunion gives them the time they needed to see clearly and find what they'd never forgotten. We all have our favorite O'Kane couple —or throuple: the epic, larger-than-life quality of king and queen Dallas and Lex or the complex angst of Ace/Rachel/Cruz, for example, but Finn and Trix may just be the most romantic yet.

“I know.” His fingers parted, opening her to him. A third pushed into her with a shallow, easy stroke. “It doesn't have to stop.”

Except that the idea terrified her. Their relationship had once been based on that sort of loss of control, on the fact that, no matter how hard either of them tried, they couldn't stay away from each other.

It had almost killed them both.

The thought shuddered through her as surely as his touch. “Tell me this is different,” she begged.

“I don't have to.” He pressed his forehead to her temple, his breath hot against her cheek. “You can feel it. You know it in your bones. Nothing's the same as before.”

Because he wasn't fighting her anymore. Fighting himself. They were sober, clear-headed, free to do what they wanted—and this was it. More than anything else, more than breath.

Finn is a remarkably protective hero—and that's saying something, considering the O'Kane men—because he loves Trix so much and everything he does is for her. And Trix embraces him fully, past and present, determined to give him a home, not just with her but in Sector Four, where true acceptance can really only be found in this dystopian world that's shot to hell.

But they also face that standard O'Kane division: a fundamental conflict that no matter what's going on around them keeps the story grounded in romance. For them, time is not something they've ever had on their side. So it's not just about two people rebuilding what they had into something even bigger and better, and it isn't just an outsider hero finally finding his place; it's how to live without waiting for the other shoe to drop, to appreciate what they have and be all in. And it's getting there that we love to see unfold, and Trix and Finn add another dimension to the O'Kane love stories, one so touchingly beautiful we're reminded how multi-faceted this series is.

Learn more about or order a copy of Beyond Addiction by Kit Rocha, available now:

Tiffany Tyer is a writer and editor who loves reading and analyzing all things romance. She also works as a vocalist, a tutor, and a non-profit ministry assistant, and she loves it that way. Her book reviews can be found at Happy Endings Reviews, a blog she co-founded.